10.6.5 and wifi issues

Maxiller

I mis-spoke. My apologies.

You disabled WMM-No Acks.

I take this to mean your AP is now ALLOWING WMM with acknowledgments. Again, in order to get 802.11N rates, WMM has to be enabled. So, really your findings are not a surprise.

I have found that everything works fine at home. At work (where I don't have access to the router or any other network devices), FireFox, FileZilla, and the Network Utility work, but everything else does not. I realize that this is really an issue with my machine, but I have trouble thinking it coincidentally started after I updated my OS.

I only have enough knowledge of networking to be dangerous. I did try to make the settings in Network match those of Firefox. At work, AirPort still shows "AirPort has the self-assigned IP Address 169.254.xxx.xxx and will not be able to connect to the internet" while some things work and others do not.

Thanks, that really solved my problem with my mini and 10.6.5.
As I am using only apple products (airport extreme, express) I am disappointed.
Changing to channel 6 helped anyway.

My AP is Asus WL500W with oleg's firmware. Here is quote from wiki:

*Enable WMM No-Acknowledgement*

This option is the same thing like "Enable WMM", but only works when WMM is turned on. The key difference is that the router will not check if a WiFi client is compatible.
It's recommended to disable this functionality since it might cause instability of the network as soon as an incompatible client is connected.

Surprise or not - my MBP doesn't drop wifi anymore.

Network utility shows 144Mbit/s link speed - it is not full 11N of course, but this is fastest speed I ever saw on that AP playing around the settings.

Kevjfar,
Are you using WEP for network security ? You should switch to using WPA2, as WEP is not secure.

Just to add that I also am experiencing wifi problems since the 10.5.6 upgrade on my macbook air 1,1.

Before the upgrade wifi has always been rock solid. Obtains the signal and holds it. Occasionally after a sleep it might not find it but turning airport off and on it would find the signal.

After the upgrade on start-up up the "cannot find a signal" window will open but more often than not it will establish a connection and hold it. After wake-up from sleep it will have lost the signal. Turning airport off and on does not work unless the air is placed close to the transmitter.

Now the first place to look would be the wifi router. But that is working perfectly with all the other computers around. It is only the air after upgrade that has difficulty finding the signal. Nor is it a problem with signal strength - other computers are showing a strong signal where the air has difficulty. Once it has acquired the signal it shows a full signal strength.

Before the upgrade the air had no problem finding the signal.

I have tried a few of the suggestions above but they have not worked.

When I go away travelling I may just end up plug-in in a wifi dongle as s stop gap.

Maybe I will just have to get it together to go back to 10.6.4

Add me to this list. Since upgrading and only since upgrading our iMac (Intel 2006) and MacBook (2007) are dropping the internet connection all the time.

This is an issue with OS 10.6.5 update.

correction

I should have said
Just to add that I also am experiencing wifi problems since the * 10.6.5 * upgrade on my macbook air 1,1.

SpeshulK wrote:

I only have enough knowledge of networking to be dangerous. I did try to make the settings in Network match those of Firefox. At work, AirPort still shows "AirPort has the self-assigned IP Address 169.254.xxx.xxx and will not be able to connect to the internet" while some things work and others do not.

We had te same settings at our place (see discussion on this forum about 169.254x.x. a few days ago).
What I conclude from our findings is that Apple stopped supporting "wrong" networks in 10.6.5.

We had a modem/router set to 169.254.x.x, which worked fine for 14 years.
Problems started when the iPad and iPhone g4 came out. They refused to connect to this network. The 10.6.5 update did the same to our laptops. The moment the update was applied all non-Apple programs still get through to the internet, but iChat, Safari etc. etc. simply refuse to try to connect with these "wrong" network settings.

We had our modem/router changed to a standard 192.168.x.x setup and all problems vanished instantly.

I seem to have resolved the wifi drop issues on our two MacBook Pro's (2006). I must admit, part of this seems like voodoo. I followed the recommendations of Steven Tannehill's post (below). I repaired permissions afterward. What makes this stranger is that, while it seemed to only work for the first few hours before the dropping resumed, over another two days, including several shut downs and reboots, my wifi got back to 'normal.' I was able to replicate this with the second computer. Here is what Tannehill wrote:

*"Copy three files to the desktop for backup, then move the files from their original location to the trash:*

*Macintosh HD -> Library -> Preferences -> SystemConfiguration*

com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
NetworkInterfaces.plist
preferences.plist

*You will be prompted for your admin password when you attempt to move the files to the trash.*

*Restart the computer.*

*Connect to your wireless access point...you may be prompted for your wireless password.*

*If this does not work (it did not for me) then change the channel on your wireless access point. This worked for me, and I finally have WiFi working."*


Hope this works for you if no one comes up with a more elegant, definitive solution.

Imcurley,

Coming onto the thread with just a "me too" post does not really help. Wireless is a hydra with many heads.

1. Did you call Apple Care to report the issue?
2. Have you thought about joining ADC (free) and reporting a bug?
3. What kind of access point are you using? Make, Model, Rev Number, Firmware.
4. Does you access point have the latest firmware?
5. What wireless security are you using?
6. What Frequency are you on? Have you tried changing frequencies? Does your AP support 5GHz? If so, have you tried 5GHz?

We cannot blame Apple for wanting to adhere to standards. 169.254.X.X is a reserved space for link local addresses.

Taken from Wiki...

"A link-local address is an Internet Protocol address that is intended only for communications within the segment of a local network (a link) or a point-to-point connection that a host is connected to. Link-local addresses allow addressing hosts without using a globally-routable address prefix that must be obtained from a local or regional Internet registry. Routers do not forward packets with link-local addresses."

If your router was forwarding on link local addresses, then it was violating the spec. The fact that it worked before was a bug and I would have opened that bug with Apple.

A big problem the industry has are a lot of the consumer grade networking gear does not adhere to IEEE standards. I always amazed that we have the level of interoperability we do.

I agree with you.

I'm away this weekend and will diagnose and post details tomorrow evening when I get to sit down and see if I can resolve the issue.

Router is Belkin, firmware was up-to-date on last check. Will post model, channel etc once I'm back home. WPA security.

Lets hope Apple takes note that people are experiencing problems and issue a easy work around or software update.

imdcoop
Do you have a copy of the old plist files ? If you could zip it and upload it someplace along with the new plist files in use now, then I can take a look to see if there's something obvious in there that causes this issue.

Robert,
When you are connected to this network, press the Option key and click on the AirPort Menu Extra a few times and note the RSSI number.
It it's lower than -78, then try moving closer to the AP so you can get the RSSI value between -50 and -72. And then leave the machine on and let it run some ping's/network activity for a while. Check if it still drops.